Wreck of the Old 97
by milkdrunk
Summary: Rumination on the cowboy's legacy.


Wreck of the Old 97

By milkdrunk

* * *

She never could understand their allure. (Using the remote, she switched off the television.)

_I'll bet you never heard ol' Marshal Dillon say  
"Miss Kitty, have you ever thought of running away and settling down? _

_Would you marry me if I asked you twice and begged you pretty please?"  
She'd have said yes in a New York minute  
They never tied the knot  
His heart wasn't in it  
He just stole a kiss as he rode away--  
He never hung his hat up at Kitty's place_

_(And my heart is sinking like the setting sun  
Setting on the things I wish I'd done  
It's time to say goodbye to yesterday  
This is where the cowboy rides away _

_We've been in and out of love and in-between  
And now we play the final showdown scene  
And as the credits roll, a sad song starts to play  
This is where the cowboy rides away) _

As a child, she would angrily (anger borne from sorrow, from not understanding) demand to know why. Why did the (sometimes-not-so-) nice man, the saviour, always leave? Why couldn't he—why _wouldn't_ he—just stay? Please? (Heartbroken pleas would later turn to petulant _Go, then_'s.)

As a woman grown (and then, as a woman grown: understanding), she resented the romance. Recoiled from the myth. Hated the ending, the (stranger-cum-hero-saviour's, the girl who found him's, the whole damned _town_'s) doomed future that lay just beyond the silver screen.

Only she didn't know all this. How could she remember, when lifetimes were lost to her?

What she did know was this:

Right there, right then, she had her very own cowboy.

And she could have _murdered_ him. (Her gun wouldn't do for this; she wanted the satisfaction of bare hands on bare skin.)

_Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?_

Don't they see? Don't they know? The day will not be saved, the world not won, when they mount and ride away. The town will succumb to the next villain, the girl will be lost (if she hasn't already disappeared into a sunset of her own).

_He just stole a kiss as he rode away_

She'd be damned if she sent him off with a clap on the back, with an ice-cold (on the house!, with gratitude, for your trouble) sarsaparilla. A kiss. (For good luck or goodbye, it didn't matter. He _hoped_ to die.) She was no Miss Kitty; she had no brave, tremulous smile—tears held valiantly, if not completely successfully, in check—to offer.

(_We've been in and out of love and in-between  
And now we play the final showdown scene_)_  
  
_

Instead—

(The final slowdance—they've an entire, rusted history of tangled defenses, drawn weapons and cast-off armour between them:)

_Bang!_

_Bang!_

_Bang!_

_Bang!_

_Bang!_

(It's murder on the dancefloor.)

--she saluted him as best she could. And damned him, in the same breath.

_"Would you marry me if I asked you twice and begged you pretty please?"  
She'd have said yes in a New York minute_

If he'd asked—if he had asked, she would have said, "No."

She wouldn't deign to honour a coward.

_They never tied the knot_

He was a coward.

_He never hung his hat up at Kitty's place_

They both were.

Cowards, both of them.

(Cowards, all of them.)

_And my heart is sinking like the setting sun_

An echo resounded throughout the hall, the slow, measured clicking of boot heels—executing a turn and walking away neatly—punctuated the chasm (and silence) between them:

_Fuck you, Space Cowboy._

Mulish, obstinate, spiteful man.

(She smirked, wryly. She _would_ have liked to fuck him. To fuck—to fuck him up, down, and over.)

_Setting on the things I wish I'd done_

She had her own battles ahead—and they didn't include saving a certain lanky, moppy-headed maverick from his own twisted sense of happy ever after (his long-anticipated final showdown. Suicide.). No, she wouldn't begrudge him poetic justice, however fucked-up and _wrong _it might be (_Oh, you're a hard one, but I know that you've got your reasons_): so, no, she would not follow and drag him, kicking and screaming, at gunpoint and then almost-immediate chloroforming (because, when had gunpoint ever deterred him?) from the would-be battlefield, nor would she, alternately, prevent him from leaving the ship (her) at all. Neither would she draw her gun and fight (fall) with him, for him. (_You only want the ones that you can't get_.)

The stupid, inevitable Greek tragedy. (A Western that staid its course and refused to go awry, regardless of a participant's wishes. Regardless of the wishes, the entreaties of a little girl. Regardless of _her_ wishes. (Did she wish otherwise?) No in-the-nick-of-time, no irony as a saving grace.) (His grace, her grace, disgrace.)

The angel had feet of clay, after all. (Only _she_ refused to crumble.)

_And as the credits roll, a sad song starts to play_

The faithful mount, battered though it was, awaited its master—Miss Kitty, with a different set of convictions and a (loaded) gun.

_This is where the cowboy rides away_

(She never could understand their allure. She would have rolled her eyes and groaned, had she known that she would become one of them, in one of them. A goddamned cliché, that's what it—what she—was.)__

Slowly going the way of the buffalo in the lonesome crowded West…

* * *

Thanks for reading. Thanks to Chey for jump-starting my typing fingers.

I do not own _Cowboy Bebop,_ or any characters therein.

Neither did I pen the songs contained herein: "Should've Been a Cowboy," "The Cowboy Rides Away," and "Desperado" were performed by Toby Keith, George Strait, and the Eagles, respectively.


End file.
